Mumbai: The railway authorities discovered a 15-foot and an inch iron rod on railway tracks between Khar and Santacruz Railway Stations after a local train collided with it on Nov 21 at 8:35pm. The motorman halted the train and alerted the station master. The Railway Protection Force (RPF), station master, and railway police responded to the scene and collected the iron rod.
The Bandra Railway Police arrested the suspect on Saturday, identifying him as Abdul Kadir Samatbrez Shaikh (20), who resides in a Khar (West) slum. The police said that a major incident had been averted by the motor man.
A police officer said: “Shaikh is addicted to drugs, and his motive was to make money by selling the rod. On the night of Nov 21, he took the iron rod from scrap. Someone might have scolded him, so he dropped the rod on the track and ran away. We tracked him with the help of CCTV footage.” A Goregaon-CSTM slow-up harbour line local train (No. 90850) was travelling between Santacruz and Khar Road railway stations when it struck the iron rod near kilometre markers 16/7 and 16/8. Motorman Yogesh Kumar cleared the rod from the track, contacted Churchgate control, and continued the journey at approximately 8:39pm.
Station Master Vishvendra Khandelwal and security personnel arrived to investigate. They located a 15-foot-long iron rod with an inch diameter positioned parallel to the tracks between the up and down lines. The rod showed damage on one end. A search of the surrounding area yielded no suspicious individuals. On Nov 22, RPF Sub-Inspector Sapna Sharma lodged a complaint.
The Bandra Railway Police registered an FIR against an unknown person under Section 152 of the Railway Act, alongside Sections 125(a), 126(2), and 329(3) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The FIR said that she had notified the Khar Road Railway Station Master. However, poor coordination resulted in delayed complaint registration with railway police.